Tag: Movements and Resistance

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/11/205_55022.html

11-06-2009 18:04

8th US Army to Remain in Korea

By Jung Sung-ki

Staff Reporter

The Eighth U.S. Army (EUSA) will remain in South Korea even after Korean commanders take over wartime operational control (OPCON) of its forces from the U.S. military in 2012, the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) announced Friday.

The United States will inaugurate a new theater command ― Korea Command (KORCOM) ― but the date of establishment has not been set, it said in a press release.

The confirmation came after it was reported that KORCOM will be set up next June to replace the ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC) in line with the 2012 OPCON transition.

“As part of OPCON transition, the U.S. military will establish a new headquarters currently called Korea Command for planning purposes,” the USFK said. “The date for the establishment of KORCOM has not been set. KORCOM will be a sub-unified command and have the same relationship to Pacific Command (in Hawaii) that USFK has now.”

It said EUSA’s transformation, to include planned moves to the Pyeongtaek area, “confirms the United States’ commitment to a strong ROK-U.S. alliance and the defense of the Korean people.”

Whether or not to relocate the EUSA headquarters in Seoul to other regions, such as Hawaii where the Pacific Command is located, has been controversial because of the command’s symbolic status on the Korean Peninsula.

Established in 1944 in Memphis, Tenn., EUSA became the spearhead for the United Nations Command (UNC) to halt aggression by North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War, and ultimately assumed overall responsibility for conducting ground operations on the peninsula under the command of a four-star American general.

But the army command’s roles and missions have been significantly reduced since the establishment of the CFC, which takes charge of wartime operations on the peninsula, in 1978.

Since then, a three-star general has taken charge of EUSA, while the CFC has been headed by a four-star general, who concurrently serves as chief of the UNC and U.S. Forces Korea (USFK).

Currently, EUSA’s missions are limited to administrative or personnel affairs. The 150-strong command is in charge of providing forces to the CFC commander and undertaking combat support operations, such as reception, staging, onward movement and integration missions, in the event of an emergency.

Earlier this year, CFC Commander Gen. Walter Sharp reportedly said he had suggested to his superiors at the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Command that the EUSA stay in South Korea even after the 2012 transition at the request of South Korean military leaders, who fear such a move would trigger a sense of insecurity among Korean citizens.

After several years of negotiations, Seoul and Washington agreed in 2007 that Seoul would execute independent operational control of its armed forces during wartime beginning April 17, 2012. The U.S. military would primarily provide naval and air support.

The two sides agreed to disband the CFC and run separate theater commands. A South Korean-U.S. “military cooperation center,” a body for combat operations, will be set up to help facilitate joint operations.

The center will comprise about 10 standing and non-standing organizations.

But South Korean conservative groups regard the command changes as a U.S. move to reduce its security commitment to South Korea.

They argue the smaller role of the USFK amid lingering threats posed by Pyongyang could tip the military balance on the peninsula.

gallantjung@koreatimes.co.kr

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/NEWKHSITE/data/html_dir/2009/11/07/200911070015.asp

U.S. Army headquarters to stay

The U.S. military in Korea has scrapped an idea to relocate its key Army headquarters to Hawaii, in a move to reaffirm its commitment to the defense of South Korea, a military source said yesterday.

“I understand that the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and the U.S. Army have accepted the proposal by the U.S. Forces Korea that the 8th Army headquarters should remain in Korea as a symbol of (U.S. military commitment) to the defense of the peninsula,” said the source.

The United States has been mulling over moving the 8th Army headquarters to Hawaii by 2012, when the wartime operational control of the Korean military is handed over to Seoul.

As part of the transformation of its military posture worldwide, Washington has been planning to move the 8th Army headquarters and reshape its body to a new unit named Operation Command Post-Korea.

The South Korean Defense Ministry and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have asked the U.S. military not to relocate the army headquarters.

“The continuing presence of the 8th Army headquarters in South Korea can mean smooth cooperation between Korea and the United States during wartime. As a result, the troop deployment time in case of contingencies can also be reduced,” a military official said.

In February, USFK commander Gen. Walter Sharp indicated he intended to scrap the relocation plan. At a meeting with Korean lawmakers, Sharp said he had suggested to U.S. Army staff that they should retain the 8th U.S. Army headquarters and that his proposal is likely to be accepted.

Experts say that by having the headquarters remain on the peninsula, the U.S. military can avoid triggering misunderstandings that the relocation of the administrative and supporting unit, consisting of some 150 staffers, could weaken the long-standing military alliance between Seoul and Washington.

The 8th Army headquarters is likely to offer administrative support to a new top U.S. military command, called KORCOM, which will replace the current USFK after the operational control turnover in April 2012

KORCOM, which will oversee the 8th Army headquarters and the 2nd Infantry Division, is expected to be created in Pyeongtaek next June.

The 8th Army fought for South Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War. It has been stationed on the peninsula since 1955 as a main deterrent against North Korea.

(sshluck@heraldm.com)

By Song Sang-ho

Navy’s proposed expansion of bombing range threatens outdoorsmen, endangered species

by Fred Bonner

It seems like the U.S. Government never stops trying to take over more land in North Carolina for one reason or another. If it’s not land (as in dry land) it’s our air space or our waters.

A few weeks ago when Gene Wooster from Alliance gave some fishing advice to a friend about where to go fishing in Pamlico Sound.

Wooster is the owner of Mobile East Marine in Alliance and spends most of his time repairing (and selling) boats from his store. From his talks with customers and his vast experience on the water of Pamlico Sound and the Neuse River, Gene has about as much knowledge about fishing for speckled trout and red drum as anyone I know.

Wooster’s friend, Owen, took his advice and fished the shoreline that was recommended and had fantastic luck catching red drum and a few specks in that location. Wooster told his friend that he’d best remember his good fishing there because it looked like the U.S. Navy was about to “take” that water and incorporate it into the BT-11 (Bombing Target) 11 restricted area. In so doing both sport and commercial fishermen would be completely banned from entering the area. Also, hunters, bird watchers and anyone not involved in practicing for warfare would be banned from using this section of N.C. public waterways.

Wooster and other concerned Tar Heels have formed a new group called “CEASE-FIRE” (Citizens Earnestly Against Serious Expansion From Increasing Range Encroachment).

The mission of the Cease-Fire Project is for MCAS Cherry Point to cease and desist from further encroachment upon the public trust waters and traditional fishing and boating grounds surrounding BT-11 at Piney Island. These waters have been accessible to boaters for over 50 years with little impact on bombing range operations. CEASE-FIRE intends to have MCAS honor the boundaries which they marked and established when they placed day-markers across the entrance to Rattan Bay and along the surrounding shoreline. We further intend for MCAS to make application for the required permitting process to make said historical boundaries the official prohibited area to be shown on nautical charts and in the Code of Federal Regulations section 334.420.

In recent meetings with the Navy, Wooster and Capt. Owen Lupton (another leader in the fight) get the feeling that the Navy’s planning to go ahead with their plan to expand BT 11 regardless of what the CEASEFIRE group or others feel is wrong.

It’s starting to sound like the OLF (Offsite Landing Facility in Camden County or Beaufort and Hyde Counties) issue all over again. Although the OLF issue seems to be “on the back burner for the time being” it’s not over yet. A friend was recently at a fundraiser in Virginia Beach and one of his tablemates was a pilot for the Navy at Oceana Naval Air Station. Not realizing that my friend was one of the landowners within the proposed OLF facility in North Carolina the pilot made several comments to the effect that “Our pilots need somewhere close by to conduct our landings and take-offs without the noise disturbing our neighbors here in Virginia. We also like the idea of being close by our home field (Oceana NAS) where we can wrap-up our practice mission then quickly return to the active social life we have here in Virginia Beach.” In other words, the Navy wants to give eastern North Carolina all the noise while Virginia Beach gets all the economic and social benefits of a resort community.

It’s seldom mentioned that the Marine Corps already has an OLF on Cedar Island that’s been there for many years and is largely unused.

Many of the Tar Heels I’ve talked with are strongly patriotic people and at times are hesitant about speaking out against the expansion of military operations in North Carolina. Still they say they’ve “about had enough of this now.” Many are veterans themselves and very familiar with the military way of doing things yet they’re upset with the encroachment of the military beyond their existing military operations within North Carolina.

There’s no question that the various branches of the military contribute a great deal to our state’s economy. Our state has traditionally been more than friendly toward the military, but many feel that the military has pushed our patience to the limit.

Although the endangered species “card” has been played against military operations at Ft. Bragg, this powerful tool has been largely ignored in the consideration of the proposed expansion of BT-11 (and BT-9) into Pamlico Sound.

Various environmental and governmental groups have it well documented that endangered and protected species such as sea turtles, bottlenose dolphins, Atlantic sturgeon, and even manatees are in the estuarine waters that surround BT-11 (and BT-9).

However, the military refuses to allow other groups into the restricted areas to study what’s there and if the years of continued weapons testing is having an effect on the wildlife within the restricted areas. If the military has conducted surveys of the areas, the information hasn’t been made available to other citizen groups.

With “Tax Time” just around the corner, we need to remember that every time you take land out of the tax base, someone’s personal taxes have go up to compensate for this loss of revenue at the government’s level. Have we had enough yet?

Visit Cease-Fire’s website at theceasefireproject.com.

Source: http://www.garnernews.net/pages/full_story/push?article-Navy%E2%80%99s+proposed+expansion+of+bombing+range+threatens+outdoorsmen-+endangered+species%20&id=4287625-Navy%E2%80%99s+proposed+expansion+of+bombing+range+threatens+outdoorsmen-+endangered+species&instance=secondary_sports_left_column

This award winning documentary by British journalist John Pilger reveals the conspiracy between the U.S. and the U.K. to remove the entire population of Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Chagos archipelago, an Indian Ocean British colony, to make way for the construction of a massive U.S. military base.  Diego Garcia is now one of America’s most important military bases.  But the Chagossian have fought back, and won significant battles in the British courts to win the right to return.   (2004, 55 mins)

From Bases to Bars

The Military & Prison Industrial Complexes Go ‘Boom’

By Mumia Abu-Jamal

Looking back to the halcyon days of the movement against the Vietnam War, one sees the birth of what seemed to be a new world. Every day, one could almost see and touch giant boulders crumbling off the edifice of repression: students protesting from coast to coast—even as some students at Kent State (Ohio) and Jackson State (Mississippi) Universities were being shot to death by National Guardsmen and police, for demonstrating!—a president resigning in disgrace; soldiers returning from war join the protests, many in their battle fatigues.

Few could have envisioned a future some two generations hence, when the nation would not only be involved in two wars simultaneously (also begun under false, misleading pretexts) but would rival Rome in its bases in virtually every region of the world, a vast, armed archipelago of empire erected by the permanent government—the corporate government, on behalf of corporate interests.

As Chalmers Johnson, author of Nemesis, has observed, the post-Vietnam military resolved to erect a system immune from the popular and democratic will that spelled the end to that war. In part, they did this by abolishing the draft. Johnson explains:

It takes a lot of people to garrison the globe. Service in our armed forces is no longer a short-term obligation of citizenship, as it was back in 1953 when I served in the navy. Since 1993, it has been a career choice, one often made by citizens trying to escape from the poverty and racism that afflict our society. That is why African-Americans are twice as well represented in the army as they are in our population, even though the numbers have been falling as the war in Iraq worsens, and why 50 percent of the women in the armed forces are minorities. That is why the young people in our colleges and universities today remain, by and large, indifferent to America’s wars and covert operations: without the draft, such events do not affect them personally and therefore need not distract them from their studies and civilian pursuits.

Johnson, writing of the United States’ “increasingly powerful military legions,” states that over 700 U.S. military bases cover the world, acquired through threat, subterfuge, sleight of hand, or questionable payment of host states.

These hundreds of bases, regardless of how they were acquired or are retained, constitute an imperial presence abroad and a none-too-subtle check on a “host” nation’s political (and military) options.

In Bushian parlance, the presence of these bases is the essence of “force projection”—the ability of the U.S. imperial military to project its forces around the globe at whim.

Even Rome would envy such a capability.

Was force projection not the essence of the (latest) Iraq war? While a United States traumatized by the events of September 11 was force-fed fears of weapons of mass destruction (via a supine media and a compliant Congress), U.S. military thinkers knew better.

Chalmers Johnson cites retired Air Force Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, a former strategist in the Near East division of the Secretary of Defense. When asked, “What are the real reasons for invasion of Iraq?” she responded:

One reason has to do with enhancing our military-basing posture in the region. We had been very dissatisfied with our relations with Saudi Arabia, particularly the restrictions on our basing. … So we were looking for alternate strategic locations beyond Kuwait, beyond Qatar, to secure something we had been searching for since the days of Carter—to secure the energy lines to the region. Bases in Iraq, then, were very important.

The unstated question, “Why?” is answered by the obvious. As long ago as 1945, the U.S. State Department was eying the Persian Gulf region with something akin to lust.

U.S. anti-imperialist critic, author, and linguist Noam Chomsky noted in his 2007 work Interventions that the events of September 11 opened wide the door to a long-coveted “prize”:

The September 11 atrocities also provided an opportunity and pretext to implement long-standing plans to take control of Iraq’s immense oil wealth, a central component of the Persian Gulf resources that the State Department, in 1945, described as a “stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”

This prize is at the very core of why the current Iraq War is being waged and why almost all wars are fought: for resources. For wealth. For power.

Fighting terror, fighting crime

Perhaps it is not too surprising to find a similar trajectory, from big to bloated, from massive to vast, in the prison industrial complex (PIC) as in the military industrial complex (MIC). The similarity is not coincidence. They are two sides of the same coin.

Linda Evans, a former anti-imperialist political prisoner, and Eve Goldberg, a prison activist, have penned a pamphlet, The Prison Industrial Complex and the Global Economy, that conclusively shows not just the correlation between the MIC and the PIC but the interrelationship with the emerging global economy. They write:

Like the military/industrial complex, the prison industrial complex is an interweaving of private business and government interests. Its twofold purpose is profit and social control. Its public rationale is the fight against crime

Not so long ago, communism was “the enemy” and communists were demonized as a way of justifying gargantuan military expenditures. Now, fear of crime and the demonization of criminals serve a similar ideological purpose: to justify the use of tax dollars for the repression and incarceration of a growing percentage of our population. … Most of the “criminals” we lock up are poor people who commit nonviolent crimes out of economic need. Violence occurs in less than 14 percent of all reported crime, and injuries occur in just 3 percent. In California, the top three charges for those entering prison are: possession of a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance for sale, and robbery. Violent crimes like murder, rape, manslaughter, and kidnapping don’t even make the top ten.

Remember the Reagan administration’s “war on drugs”? It has led to the largest prison binge on earth, and if it were indeed a war rather than a poor metaphor, then the massacres erupting from Mexico would signal the Tet Offensive that spelled the end of the Vietnam War. The only thing missing from the war on drugs is a signature on a piece of paper pleading surrender.

Whole communities have been shattered, and where once hundreds of thousands were cast into U.S. dungeons, prisons now hold millions, with millions more under lifetime voting bans and career blockages—in virtual prison while ostensibly free.

Just as cynicism led to wars abroad, similar social forces waged war on Americans, as, in many states and jurisdictions, the only growth industry could be found in construction, jobs, and services in the PIC.

How much has it grown?

The United States, the abode of some 6 percent of the world’s population, today imprisons nearly 25 percent of all the prisoners on earth.

In her book Is the Prison Obsolete? scholar-activist and prison abolitionist Dr. Angela Y. Davis, herself a political prisoner during the Black Liberation movement of the 1960s, brings her unique lived and learned perspective to the question:

When I became involved in antiprison activism during the late 1960s, I was astounded to learn that there were then close to two hundred thousand people in prison. Had anyone told me that in three decades ten times as many people would be locked away in cages, I would have been absolutely incredulous. I imagine that I would have responded something like this: “As racist and undemocratic as this country may be [remember, during that period the demands of the Civil Rights movement had not yet been consolidated], I do not believe that the U.S. government will be able to lock up so many people without producing powerful public resistance. No, this will never happen, not unless this country plunges into fascism.”

Captive Markets

Along with the immense and unprecedented explosion in the U.S. prison population has come the expansion in business for corporations trading behind bars.

Prisons today, although islands separated by brick and steel from “free” society, are captive markets where billions are made by merchants.

From Dial soap to Famous Amos cookies, there’s enormous profit to be made. In 1995 alone, Dial sold more than $100,000 worth of its products to the New York City jail system. VitaPro Foods, a Montreal-based maker of soybean meat-substitutes, sold $34 million worth of its products to Texas state prisons.

Names of corporations that sell their stocks on the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, such as Archer Daniel Midlands, Nestle Foods, Ace Hardware, and Polaroid, are also found as business advertisers on corrections.com.

The PIC is a field in which remarkable profits are harvested.

Aftermath

The MIC has created not security but the very absence of it. The lack of safety was exacerbated by the excesses of the George W. Bush administration, which promoted a foreign policy best summed up as “Operation Imperial Arrogance.”

The Iraq War, prosecuted with an intensity that was to be expected under the billing of “shock and awe,” delivered unprecedented death and destruction to the country, but the resistance, which took months (and U.S. provocations) to mobilize, delivered such a drubbing to U.S. forces that the strategic and political leadership had to unwrap new ways of working in the Iraqi field.

The aftermath of this once-impressive military exercise, now undercut by several years of urban guerrilla counterattacks, left some of the United States’ allies in the region underwhelmed, if not somewhat contemptuous of U.S. political elites.

The PIC, driven more by malevolent market forces than strict legal necessities, affected the nation in more ways than the obvious. In the fall of 2004, some 5.3 million people were considered disenfranchised felons, meaning they were unable to vote. Many of them, if they had voted, presumably could’ve changed the fate of the country by preventing the election of George W. Bush and, theoretically at least, prevented the Iraq War from some of its strategic and tactical errors. It is possible that their votes could’ve contributed to an earlier cessation of the war.

Indeed, if several thousand had been allowed to vote in Florida in 2000, perhaps both wars could’ve been avoided. This is speculative, however, given the corporate control over both parties and the propensity of both parties to advance similar objectives, albeit with differing rhetoric.

Mumia Abu-Jamal is an award-winning journalist who has been a resident of Pennsylvania’s death row for 25 years. He is the author of six books, including the recently released Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the USA. His radio commentaries are available at prisonradio.org.

Source: http://www.warresisters.org/node/861